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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 5, 2005 / 25 Adar II, 5765

Sharon's folly

By Daniel Pipes



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The Israeli prime minister not only betrayed those who voted for him but his legally dubious move will have many malign consequences


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | With the passage last week of a budget bill in Israel, the government of Ariel Sharon appears to be ready to remove over 8,000 Israelis living in Gaza, if necessary with force.


In addition to the legal dubiousness of this step and its historical unprecedented nature (challenge to the reader: name another democracy that has forcibly removed thousands its own citizens from their lawful homes), the planned withdrawal of all Israeli installations from Gaza amounts to an act of monumental political folly.


It also comes as an astounding surprise. After the Oslo round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations (1993-2001) ended in disaster, many Israelis looked back on Oslo's faulty assumptions, their own naïveté, and resolved not to repeat that bitter experience. Israelis awoke from the delusion that giving the Palestinians land, money, and arms in return for airy-fairy and fraudulent promises would lessen Palestinian hostility. They realized that, to the contrary, this imbalance enhanced Palestinian rejection of the very existence of the Jewish state.


By early 2001, a riven Israeli electorate had largely re-unified. When Ariel Sharon became prime minister in February 2001, a wiser leadership had apparently taken over in Jerusalem, one that recognized the need for Israel to return to toughness and deterrence.


These optimistic expectations were indeed fulfilled for nearly three years, 2001-03. Sharon engaged in a quite masterful double diplomacy in which he simultaneously showed a cheery face (toward the American government and his leftist coalition partners) and a tough one (toward his Likud constituents and the Palestinians). The purposefulness and underlying consistency of his premiership from the start impressed many observers, including this one; I assessed Sharon's record to be "a virtuoso performance of quietly tough actions mixed with voluble concessions."


Sharon decisively won re-election in January 2003 over Amram Mitzna, a Labor opponent who advocated an Oslo-style unilateral retreat from Gaza. Sharon unambiguously condemned this idea back then: "A unilateral withdrawal is not a recipe for peace. It is a recipe for war." After winning the election, his talks in February 2003 about forming a coalition government with Mitzna failed because Sharon so heavily emphasized the "strategic importance" of Israelis living in Gaza.


By December 2003, however, Sharon himself endorsed Mitzna's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. While he did so in a spirit very different from the prior Oslo diplomacy, his decision has the same two main characteristics.


First, because the decision to retreat from Gaza took place in the context of heightened violence against Israelis, it vindicates those Palestinian voices arguing for terrorism. The Gaza retreat is, in plain words, a military defeat. It follows on the ignominious Israeli abandonment of its positions and its allies in Lebanon in May 2000, a move which much eroded Arab respect for Israeli strength, with dire consequences. The Gaza withdrawal will almost certainly increase Palestinian reliance on terrorism.


Second, the retreat is heating up the political climate within Israel, bringing back the dangerous mood of exaggeration, incivility, hostility, and even lawlessness. The prospect of thousands of Israelis evicted from their homes under threat of force is rudely interrupting what had been a trend toward a more healthy atmosphere during the relative calm of 2001-03.


Sharon's plans at least have a disillusioned quality to them, sparing Israel the wooly notions of a "new Middle East" that so harmed the country a decade ago. But in another way, Sharon's plans are worse than Oslo; at least that disaster was carried out by the clueless Left. A Right — led by Ariel Sharon — valiantly and staunchly opposed it. This time, it is the Right's hero who, allied with the far-Left, is himself leading the charge, reducing the opposition to marginality.


There are many theories for what reversed Sharon's views on the matter of a unilateral Gaza withdrawal in the ten months between February and December 2003 — I have my own ideas about the hubris of elected Israeli prime ministers — but whatever the reason, its consequences are clear.


Sharon betrayed the voters who supported him, wounding Israeli democracy. He divided Israeli society in ways that may poison the body politic for decades hence. He aborted his own successful policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He delivered Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim rejectionists their greatest boost ever. And he failed his American ally by delivering a major victory to the forces of terrorism.

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JWR contributor Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum.

© 2005, Daniel Pipes